the doors
by Novocain
Summary: .:Kakashi wears the Leaf tattooed into his lungs:. Because there is strength and there is weakness and there are the reasons for both. Or not, as the case may be. Team Minato never was. AU


Kakashi wears the Leaf tattooed into his lungs. He is quite sure that he is incapable of anything less, that there is nothing in the Five Countries which could ever be placed above the village. It is duty, it is knowledge, it is responsibility - goal, raison d'etre, vengeance, a point to prove - _everything_. It just is. There are rules and rules are important, are what bring every sunrise. There is the Sandaime, whose word is infallible (because it has to be - because even the godless shinobi need gods), whose decisions are unquestionable. There is loyalty, there is a promise, there is a purpose - but loyalty to the Hokage only, a promise to himself only, a purpose made to spite dead men only. He has been in Konoha's ranks for the better part of a decade, and he has seen no reason to change these intrinsic facts that make him. He is alive still, which is more than thirteen teammates and three jounin sensei can say.

Other ninja are weak. He is fourteen, seven months fresh from the jounin exams, and he is passing the clearing where the Memorial Stone stands when he sees one of the Uchiha sprats trying to shove chocolate at a small kunoichi with purple stripes on her face. She is blushing and half-scowling, hands stuffed in her apron pockets, and Kakashi does not pause to watch her response. He keeps walking, pushing down the clench of his gut. Attachment is what makes them weak. Kakashi knows this like he knows the gritty burn of soldier pills.

The light weight of the katana on his back is almost familiar at this point, and he returns to kenjutsu training when he reaches his clearing. ANBU is to be his new lover - just five months and he will submit his application. (Love is patient and kind and all that bullshit that doesn't mean anything next to belief.)

The war ends. The Kyuubi comes. The Sandaime falls. The Yondaime takes office a week before Kakashi's self-imposed deadline. Kakashi, hospitalized with severe chakra deprivation after the attack on Konoha, does not witness the ceremony.

There is - something happens that he doesn't know how to describe in its surreality, in its nagging familiarity that his perfect memory has never allowed (and Kakashi has never believed in exceptions to the rules, so....). It is two days into his stay in the medical ward and only three hours past his coma. A passing medic-nin with purple stripes on her stress-pallid cheeks backtracks to his bed, the privacy sheet having been neglected. Her previously exhausted face is suddenly glowing - _kakashikun i havent seen you since academy_ - and he doesn't recognize the symptoms of this particular disease anymore than he recognizes her. Fifteen seconds of his stoic stare suffice; she falters - _oh you dont remember me - _and he has never heard such emptiness before, not even from Sakumo in the last days of his disgrace. (It would flit across the mind of a normal person that perhaps the drastic difference is this woman-child's capacity for utter joy. Kakashi - it does not even merit saying that this concept comes nowhere near him.) This hollow version is far more interesting to him than the exuberant one of before, if only because he feels he can learn from it, but the girl excuses herself a few moments later and Kakashi puts her out of his mind. He has no faith in the fortitude of her foray into emotional lack.

The day after he regains consciousness, he escapes the hospital. Six days after that, he applies for ANBU. Two days after that, the new Hokage summons him.

Bright eyes, bright hair - and Kakashi has never seen this man, never been blinded like this: serene power and a goddamned _smile_ that tells anyone who looks that he knows life is missing something, is going to do something about it. (But he has never known what is missing, so how can he?)

- _Do you believe you're ready for ANBU, Hatake-kun?_

- _I'll save your life._ Statement of fact, a new goal born in a glance.

- _...Some believe saving a man's life makes you responsible for them. Masochistic of you, hm?  
_

_- Sadistic, Hokage-sama._

_- That too._

They don't speak again.


End file.
